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Pilot
Series Premiere. "Pilot" is the first episode of Season 1, and the first produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on September 22, 2011. The pilot was produced in two forms: a 43 minute broadcast version, and a 56 minute extended cut, available with optional commentary on the Season 1 DVD. Synopsis 2001 September 11 John Reese is in bed with his girlfriend, Jessica Arndt in Mexico. On the phone with her mother, Jessica claims she is on vacation with her friend Cindy because she hasn't told her mom about her relationship with John yet. Jessica is sad that John will go back to his job in the army and that she wouldn't be seeing him again for a while. She is surprised when John tells her that he has already quit the military so that he wouldn't miss the chance that she will still be there when he gets back next time. They are just about to celebrate when Jessica turns on the TV and learns about the attack on the World Trade Center. 2011 September On a New York subway train, a downtrodden, bearded and dishevelled John Reese is harassed by a gang, led by Anton O'Mara. Reese easily overpowers them, with the attack caught by a security camera. At the police station, Detective Carter retrieves Reese's finger prints from a plastic cup and is informed by Forensic Tech Alfredo Narciso that Reese is wanted in four different countries as well as in connection with a Queens missing persons case from 2008. Narciso asks Carter who she has, "..the Angel of Death?". At the same time, a very well dressed attorney arrives at the station and points out Reese as his client. Carter, now aware of Reese's wanted status, exits the station just in time to see Reese getting into the Town Car and watching it pull away. In the company of Finch's private security , Reese is brought to the Queensboro Bridge, where he is introduced to Mr. Finch, who knows about Reese's past, including the work he had done for the government, and about his presumed death. It is there that Finch offers Reese a new purpose in life - more specifically, a job. Driving to mid-town New York, Finch shares statistics about the many deaths occurring in New York, claiming he has a way to foresee people involved in future crimes, though he does not know whether they will be the victim or the prepetrator. He points out Diane Hansen, an Assistant District Attorney who is at the top of his list, and asks Reese to follow her and protect her. Reese refuses accussing Finch of being a bored rich guy and attacks Finch's men when they try to stop him. He retreats to his hotel. After falling asleep in his cheap hotel, Reese awakens in a fancy room, tied to the bed. After being forced to hear a woman being murdered in the adjacent room, Reese breaks free and discovers it is a recording played by Finch. Finch reveals he knew about the death of Jessica, and promises Reese a chance to save people in time. In an abandoned library, Finch supplies Reese with fake identities and introduces Reese to his List: a series of Social Security numbers, each belonging to a person who is linked to a violent crime. The two start following Hansen, with Reese breaking into her house to duplicate her e-mail messages and other online accounts, as well as install a microphone inside her cellphone. Reese gathers enough information to shorten the list of supposed attackers to her colleague and ex-boyfriend, James Wheeler, and Lawrence Pope, a prisoner whom she is prosecuting for the murder of his fellow drug dealer. Reese and Finch suspect Pope's gang is going after Hansen. After a physical confrontation in Pope's cell, Hansen is left unharmed, but Reese concludes that Pope was framed, and decides to seek out Pope's younger brother, Michael, who saw the real murderers. At their office, Reese spies on Wheeler, who sneaks into Hansen's office and prints Pope's file. After an attempt to talk to Michael fails, Reese tracks down Anton , who is revealed to be a weapons dealer along with his father. After shooting all of Anton's gang and his father, Reese takes control of their weapons. Having earlier slipped his cell phone in Michael's bag, Reese overhears Michael being kidnapped. After rescuing him from his kidnappers, Reese discovers that the criminals are in fact corrupt police officers. Reese takes the opportunity to relieve officer Stills of his shield. Reese meets Finch, accompanied by his Finch's private security , in Central Park. Reese shares his suspicions of Lawrence Pope being framed by the police officers. Asking about Finch's method of predicting crimes, Reese learns that when the World Trade Center was attacked, Finch was working at a "lucrative" job and was only concerned about making money. Following the attacks, Finch was hired to design a Machine that will detect possible terrorist activities. Since the Machine was programmed to prevent the next 9/11, any other crimes detected were deemed "irrelevant," and were erased. This bothered Finch, and he built in a back-door that enabled him to access the list of the "irrelevant" crimes. By communicating with the Machine (which, according to him, is "everywhere, watching us with 10,000 eyes, listening with a million ears"), Finch is given a list of only the Social Security numbers of people involved in the future crimes. Following Lawrence Pope's murder in his cell, Reese spies over a meeting between Hansen and the corrupt officers in an abandoned alley. Reese discovers that Hansen is in fact the ringleader, who orders them to "take care of Wheeler." Reese is soon caught by Lionel Fusco, another dirty cop, who drives a knocked-out Reese to Oyster Bay. After warning Fusco, Reese detonates a flash-bang grenade causing Fusco to loose control. He rescues Fusco from the overturned car and uses Fusco's keys to release himself. After making sure Fusco is wearing his vest, Reese shoots him with Fusco's gun and leaves. At Wheeler's apartment, three of the police officers, along with an ex-con they plan to frame, are about to kill Wheeler when it is revealed he is with his son. Reese appears and takes Azarello hostage allowing an unsuspecting Wheeler and his son to leave unharmed. After a short stand-off, Reese rescues the ex-con, with one officer wounded (Doyle) and the other one (Stills) killed. In a courtroom, as Hansen presents her evidence in a case, a recording of her meeting with the officers is played to the entire court room, Wheeler included. Hansen notices Reese, who leaves quietly. Reese surprises Fusco, and reveals to him that the body of Detective Stills is in the trunk of Fusco's car. Since Reese killed the officer with Fusco's gun, Reese blackmails Fusco and recruits him as his mole inside the police force. Reese orders Fusco to bury Stills in Oyster Bay and returns his gun before leaving. Back at the Queensboro Bridge, Finch reveals to Reese that the world believes both of them are dead and offers him a large sum of money to disappear. If he stays, Finch tells him that his past will catch up to him and that they will both end up dead for real. As Detective Carter arrests Azarello , she presses him for information about Reese. Overhearing this, Reese knows Carter will attempt to track him down. Walking away, Reese stares into a security camera which is revealed to be connected to a server farm, with rows upon rows of computers collecting information. Trivia *On his fake driving licence Reese uses the alias "James J. Manzione". *In the hotel in which Reese sleeps at (before waking up in a different location), he is watching scenes from 'Seven Samurai'(?) by Akira Kurosawa before falling asleep. In Wolf and Cub , using the alias of Detective Stills, he inspects the apartment of the late Travis McGrady, who happens to have a copy of the film. Travis' younger brother Darren recognises Reese as a 'ronin', a samurai without a master, who breaks with the samurai code by not committing seppuku (ritual suicide), but instead "wanders the lands" helping other people. *The yellow bracketed/dotted line/cross-haired square cursor indicates that the person possesses prior knowledge of the machine. Otherwise, it is an incident where the Machine zeros in on someone using its Facial Recognition/Tracking software. Also, the Machine is able to generate a transcription of any conversation using its voice recognition software. Apparently, the Machine can recognize/track/transcribe and make a final determination in real time (relevant/irrelevant, as in the massive loss of life, as oppose to pedestrian crimes such as murder for instance: Whether the reason to do so, is to cope with "data overload" from the sheer volume of hits from an information processing/management standpoint, which currently plagues contemporary computer systems or that government intervention might expose the "warantless surveillance" capabilities of "The Machine", which is classified at the highest levels of secrecy is undetermined). Production notes *The press release for the episode contained several different names for the characters. Wheeler was credited as Miller, Lawrence Pope was credited as Alonzo Pope, and Diane Hansen was credited as Diane Bray. *This is the only episode where Jim Caviezel does the voice over for the 'stay tuned' announcement at the end of the show. All others have been done by Michael Emerson. *In the initial 'Pilot' script written by Jonathan Nolan, Finch gives a few hundred dollars to Reese to pay him for the time he needed to explain the job he had in mind for Reese. These scenes were cut from the script for the actual episode. Reese would use the money later to pay for the hotel room where he shaved and cut his hair. *In the extended promo, the servers in the datacenter shown at the end of the episode are labelled "INGRAM sabre blade 2437", which would be a possible reference to Nathan Ingram. In the aired Pilot, as well as in the unaired extended Pilot, the labels were changed into the fictitious brand "Sabre Blade 2437", while in fact they are Dell PowerEdge SC1425 servers. *Several location stills and behind the scenes photographs taken by Amanda Carroll who worked as a set designer on the Pilot episode can be found at her smugmug.com portfolio. *Scenes inside the Library were filmed in W. B. Thompson Mansion, also known as Alder Manor, a historic country estate at 1061 N. Broadway, Yonkers. Reese's dumpy hotelroom as well as the fancy one where he wakes up and meets Finch again and Diane Hansen's apartment were also filmed in the building. A New York City landmark at the corner of East 30th St and Lexington Ave stands in as Library exterior. Bloopers and continuity errors *Although the events in the episode are supposed to be taking place in September, the time stamp of the surveillance feed shows April 14, 2011 (04-14-11). Moreover, the same date can be seen on different surveillance feeds along with different timestamps, even though the storyline stretches over several days. *The first scene with Reese in the courthouse spying on Diane Hansen is a mirrored sequence: **Reese's hair points in the opposite direction. **He's wearing the ear piece in his left ear. **The bandage is on his left hand. **The wall he is hiding behind is to his left hand side. *In the following scenes with Hansen talking to Fusco, Reese is standing at the exact same corner and the wall is to his right hand side. Hair, ear piece, and bandage have also switched back to their normal position. *In the same scene at the courthouse, Reese is holding his cellphone in his right hand. When the image changes to close up, the phone is in his left hand. *Reese said he shot Stills with Fusco's gun which wasn't the case. Fusco's gun is a silver one and Reese actually used a black one. *In the end, one corrupted police was arrested by Carter and he said he only knew it was "some guy in a suit".However, everytime he saw Reese, Reese was wearing a long black jacket. That's no way that he would know Reese later wears suits as costume. *In the fake ID Reese used, we can see "F" as female in the sex line. Music *"Angel" by Massive Attack - during John Reese's intervention to stop Stills and his men. Analysis Themes *Diane Hansen serves as an Assistant District Attorney, while serving as a ringleader of a crime ring. *Several police officers (including Fusco and Stills) commit crimes and frame innocent people. *Carter meets Reese, but loses him soon after. Cultural references *Finch mentions "a list", and the names representing "lost chances." Michael Emerson is best known for his portrayal of Benjamin Linus on J.J. Abrams' Lost. Linus was frequently involved with the keeping and making of lists of names which determined people's fate. *The Camera ID and time stamps on one of the surveillance feed images in the scene just before Finch and Reese meet in Central Park show "Car 481-5 16:23:42". 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 are the numbers that frequently appear in Lost. *As Reese is hacking into Diane's e-mail account, a list of messages is displayed. The names of the senders include Peter Bishop, Charles Francis and Philip Broyles, all characters from J.J. Abrams' Fringe. The other name, Emily Gaunt, is Fringe's charge scenic artist. We can see the exact same series of e-mails at the twelfth minute of the season one episode of Fringe "The Dreamscape". The only difference is the name of John Scott, which had been modified as A. Bayard. Literary techniques *John Reese has flashbacks from his time with Jessica Arndt. Quotes *"When you find that one person who connects you to the world, you become someone different, someone better. But when that person is taken from you, what do you become then?" -Reese *"We have more in common than you'd think. I've been watching you for a long time, John." -Finch *"You need to understand, Mr. Reese. The information I have is incomplete but it's never wrong." -Finch *"I guess you could call me a concerned third party." -Finch *"That's what I'm offering you, a chance to be there in time." -Finch *"You need to understand, Mr. Reese, the information I have is incomplete, but it’s never wrong. You need to know what it would be like to be forced to listen to someone get murdered and not be able to do anything about it."-Finch *"They will come looking for you. The police, the Mob your old friends at the CIA. If you stay and we continue to do this, sooner or later both of us will probably wind up dead - Actually dead, this tme." -Finch *"I said I would tell you the truth. I didn't say you would like it" -Finch es:Pilot 101 101